Page 27 of The Enemy's Defector
“Then what did you tell him? What reason did you give him?”
“I told him that I didn’t want to get married yet.” If he wasn’t acting so cool toward me, I would’ve shared the complete truth. That I hadn’t wanted to get married because I knew it wouldn’t be to him. I could never marry one of his brothers. Only Nik. But he’d already been taken by then, at least per the rumors I’d overheard, and I didn’t want to risk being sent to be Damon or Saul’s wife.
If Nik hadn’t been taken and if he’d been home, I would’ve happily hurried over there to marryhim. Then I’d never spy or speak to Anton again. But that wasn’t possible at that time because Nik was kidnapped. And I wouldn’t have been able to hunt for the proof I needed about my father’s death, either.
“I can’t believe he’d stoop so low as to send you as a spy…” He narrowed his eyes, staring off into the distance. When he got moody and broody like this, there was nothing I could say to snap him back to logic.
Because he knew me, dammit.
He’d known me.
I wasn’t a spy.
I wasn’t an enemy no matter what Anton wanted the world to think.
I was a Kozlov by name and that was it. Nik had always only known me as Katerina, the girl he used to tease and chase as a child, the woman he’d seduced into bed one night.
But no. He’ll always see me as the supposed enemy.Just because of the “leader” of my family, I had to be affiliated as the enemy, not an old friend.
Not the mother of his child.
Over these three days of hiding with him while he worked through the anger and resentment of having been kidnapped, I realized more and more signs that I had to be pregnant.
I’d missed my period. I had been feeling lightheaded more often. Certain smells made me want to gag. And cramps had started to make me queasy.
Forget about it, Kat.
If Nik was showing his true colors to me now, so easily swayed with the conviction that I’d be a spy in his family, then I’d just have to accept it and move on.
That was the kicker, though. I didn’t know what to move on to or how to process the changes in my life.
Leaving Anton wasn’t a challenge. I’d dreamed of going my own way for so long, having no sense of family or home with my uncle whom I despised.
But becoming a mother? With the child of a man who only saw me as an enemy by name to stay away from?
What can I do?
Where will I go?
How can I even tell him?
Retreating into myself, I didn’t care if Nik noticed how quiet I was on the fourth day at the safehouse with him. It wasn’t likeI was actually trying to give him a cold shoulder, but maybe that was part of my motive.
I simply didn’t know how to handle him like this, mad and suspicious. It seemed too farfetched to hope that he’d be loving after the trauma he’d gone through. I wasn’t so silly and stupid as to wish he’d hug me and consolemeafter what he’d suffered. But… something other than his frantic pacing and mumbling and scowling would’ve been nice.
Be serious, Kat. He’s not going to ask you to be with him at all. Acting like this, he won’t want anything to do with this baby.
Lying on the couch, I stared at the cushions and tried to shove these negative thoughts away.
Reflecting on who Nik was and anything we shared in the past wouldn’t get me anywhere.
I was on my own now. Just me and this little one inside me.
But if I could be so daring as to dream and wish, to brainstorm and fantasize…
Closing my eyes, I snuggled into the sheet that I’d placed here for my sleeping arrangements.
If I could envision the perfect future with Nik, it’d be one where he was the charming, sly man who made me come so many times that night. The strong lover who’d lost himself with me. The spy who’d protected me when I tried to rescue him.
